I'd never given religion a fair shake, and hadn't planned on it. But I was in a RiteAid Pharmacy and something caught my eye. I saw the true distillation of faith. I reached for it, and it transformed my life.

I speak of course, of The Jelly Bean Prayer.

Jesus saves your taste buds

Sure, you can laugh, but doesn't the Bible say that God exists in all confections?

Psalm 119:103

How sweet are Your words to my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Proverbs 16:24

Pleasant words are a honeycomb, Sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

See! God likes candy. And he loves candy with a prayerful poem on the back.

Thank you, Lord, for these jelly beans that remind me of your love.

BLACK represents my sinful heart, keeping me from you above.

RED represents the blood you shed to provide salvation free.

WHITE shows the cleansing of my sin as I put my faith in Thee.

YELLOW is for heaven above, my new home I'll have someday.

GREEN is for the growth I will see as I read your Word and pray.

PURPLE shows you are King of all, the one I choose to obey.

Thank you, Lord, for these jelly beans.

They mean more than words can say.

And with salvation in my heart, I bought them ($5.99) feeling an overwhelming urge to put Jesus' holy beans deep inside my mouth.

There was a little card so I could give it as a gift.

Hm. None of the beans were sheep flavored.

Hm. None of the beans were Jesus flavored.

But I decided I needed the holy spirit to myself. I was a bit nervous. I mean, what if I like the black ones the best? They represent sin!

Luckily, I liked the red ones the best. Which means I like blood.

And so I was filled with the holy spirit. I am closer to God just like if I'd devoted my life to good works or whatever it is that the religious do.

Well, that was easy. Next week, I'll complete my college degree by lighting Scientist Prayer Candles.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Continuing the story of Flux Warden, a text adventure I wrote a while ago. This is a walkthrough in prose format.

I’m in my room again, huddled and trembling. I have a book.
I have a paperclip. I have a rusty screwdriver. And with those things, I’ve got
to kill an impervious monster with tentacle fingers who can drain my mind away.

Some warden I am.

Am I a warden? The nameplate on the door says Flux WARDEN. And
I can flux. I can move between dimensions by using things I find.

So, I guess so. I guess I’m a warden. A terrible warden, but
still.

Still.

Still, it’s my job to put things back in order. Get the
inmates back in their cells. Problem is, the doors don’t shut because the power
is out. Problem is, this isn’t a prison for normal people. Everyone is
horrifyingly powerful. There’s no way I can get them locked away.

Maybe I should wait for help. I
don’t have the weapons or knowledge or power. All I can do is flux between
worlds.

Although I did get Shard back in his room. Somehow.

I look down at what I’m holding
again. The paperclip takes me to a dying spaceship. The book takes me home. The
screwdriver takes me...

Where?

I hold the screwdriver in my hands
and feel its surface. Like with the paperclip, it floods my mind, but not with sights
and sounds. I feel things. I feel pain. Blood. Rage.

I drop it. Not going there.

I pick it up. You never know.

I flip through the diary, my
diary, again. A passage catches my eye:

It’s
my third day as warden, and Leech has already threatened me. “You think you’re
so strong, but I know your power. You can’t do anything without your little
trinkets. Well, they’re gone. I know Blast took them when he left.”

He’s
right. I can’t flux in here without items. Good thing I kept a bookmark.

My bookmark. The paperclip. The spaceship.
The frozen woman in the coffin. The gun she’s holding.

I put the screwdriver in my pocket,
hold the book under my arm, and take out the paperclip. I bend it. I bend it. I
bend it, and it’s gone. And I’m gone.

I stand at the bridge again, staring
at the blasted screens. I head aft and climb the ladder to the upper deck. The crazed
EOD is gone, returned to its safe repair berth, but I still glance about
nervously as I climb.

I enter the cold room and peer into
the last remaining animation coffin. The frozen woman’s eyes stare back at me. The
gun is gone.

I rub the sleeve of my uniform on the
window, trying to scrape off enough frost to see better. Nope. It’s gone.

There, strapped to my leg, is a 30
watt, high density teragun. And not just any teragun. It’s the one from inside
the coffin.

What. The. Fuck.

I draw it and check the charge. The
ammo readout flickers and wildly guesses at how many shots it can fire.
Finally, the word FAULT flashes. Figures. The gun in this world is just as
useless as the rusty screwdriver in my own. No matter what world I visit, my
luck is terrible.

There’s no way I can defeat that
tentacle man, that Leech. I might as well go back into the airlock and blow
myself into space. It’d be faster.

I take a deep breath. Not today.

I sense blood and pain again and
realize it’s coming from the weapon in my hands. Like the screwdriver, I can
feel it pulling me to a world of rough, unending violence.

What have I got to lose? I flux the
gun, tearing through reality to the caves of pain.

I’m not as shocked as I was the first
few fluxes. I’m in a hard rock cavern, stinking of sulfur and methane. There is
no light, but I can tell where I am, the shape and composition of the rock.

I can breathe without air. I can see
without light. The rules here are different.

The teragun is now a crude, wooden
spear. The hologram is a shield with (surprise, surprise) the word FLUX on the
front. And the paperclip became a jagged, rusted dagger dangling from my hip.

None of these things could help my
kill the monster in my native world. Everything I hold is a weak weapon.

Hm. Everything I hold is a weapon. Even
the shield has sharpened edges for cutting exposed skin. If there was anywhere
I could find a truly deadly implement, it would be here.

I’m in the right place. I feel relieved,
lucky, blessed. Seized by a pagan impulse, I drop to my knees and lay my
weapons carefully in front of me. I pray, my head bowed low to face the ground where
they live. “Thank you, my gods, for this boon. I shall serve you in all things.”

I get up off my knees as the ground
shakes. The caves trembles. Yes, the gods heard my prayer. Their voices rumble
from the stones all around.

“Fuck you and your prayers, you weak piece
of shit,” they say, and laugh.

I stand, overwhelmed by… Overwhelmed
by… Overwhelmed by hate. I grab the spear and point it to the floor.

“And fuck you back!” I shout. “Who do
you think you are, you impotent bastards? I will kill you myself. I will
sharpen this spear and clean this knife and then I will dig down to you and
spit in your ugly faces!” Then I bend over and fart at them. “What do you think
of that, you still-birthed children of whores?”

And I’ve gone to far. The cavern echoes
with a terrifying stillness. The air around me trembles with fear. Then the
rumble starts. The cave shakes with increasing intensity.

I’ve got to get the hell out of here.
I grab the knife in both hands and try to remember the shape and nature of the
spaceship as the shaking explodes around me into laughter.

The gods are laughing. It’s a
deafening noise that jars boulders and clinker loose from the walls. Dust and
pebbles fall into my mouth, making me choke and spit. Finally, the laughter
ends.

“Well said! Go to the casinghead,” the
gods say. “Your salvation is there, Flux. From there, go to The One Tree of
magic.”

I open my mouth to ask what they mean,
but the laughter begins again and, afraid the tunnel will collapse, I run forward.
I don’t know what a casinghead is, but I’m going to find it.

TO BE C-

You know what? You’ll just have to
wait until I get this game converted to Android/iOS. Or play it online (requires Flash).

Thursday, May 10, 2018

I’m on the spaceship again, but now somewhere else. It
appears to be the bridge. Consoles range the room, but all are cracked. A
single, blank square seems undamaged, but I can’t figure how to turn it on.
here is some kind of groove, just the right size for my keycard. I put it in,
and it pops back into my hand.

A deep voice rattles in a language I never learned, but
somehow understand. “You are not authorized for helm control, Flux Noyan.”
Well, better than I expected.

I glance around, trying to figure out what to do now. There
seems to be a chamber aft of here that-

There is a creak, a splitting sound, and the deck cracks
open. Jets of hot mist burst forth, burning me. I fall and pedal backwards
towards the stone ledge behind me. The Spirit branch continues along this way,
and a small house sits…

And the confusion is gone. I’m back on the spaceship. I
stand and glance around. There’s a ladder up, but the room is empty. Wait, no.

Some kind of blank, metal obelisk stands in front of me. It
feels significant, protruding from the deck. I touch its angled surface.
Nothing. I find another keycard slot. I put it in and again it pops back out. I’m
about to try again when a voice speaks.

“Authorization accepted, Flux Noyan.”

Well, at least I have a high enough rank to use this thing,
whatever it is. The surface darkens into lines and circles and words. I read.

Robot Control Console – One EOD remaining (location unknown)

Well, I know where it is. From the sound of it, it’s still where
I found it just outside the airlock.

A small rectangle extrudes labelled RETURN ALL DRONES. My
finger hovers over the button. How will it get outside the ship to the tiny
repair bay I saw on the hologram?

What the hell; I push it. The surface flattens and the
console goes blank. I wait and listen. There’s a hiss and a clank.

“Warning! Airlock cycle activated.” Clever machine. It just
went out the door.There’s a thump as
the airlock cycles. I wait, but nothing more happens. I peer up the ladder.
It’s definitely gone.

I wonder if it made it back. I turn on the hologram device.
Aaand… Yes. A tiny icon of the EOD appears in the bay.

Now what? I walk back to the bridge. I climb the ladder and
look through the empty airlock. Finally, I walk into the room with the
animation coffins. The frozen woman stares back at me, clutching the gun. I
remember the man made of stone back in that other world of the prison. If I had
that gun…

I look around for latches, handles, something I could do to
open the coffin, but it’s seamless like everything else on the ship. I’m going
to need a weapon if I’m going to fight that thing. I’m going to need that
knife.

Damn.

I hold out the hologram and use it twice. Reality regrounds
itself around me. There, at my feet is the dead woman, still clutching the
knife in her stomach. I kneel.

“I’m sorry,” I say to her relaxed face, “but I need this.”

I reach out and pull. It’s not like I expected. It doesn’t
slide out nicely. Her hands are like steel. This is more than rigor mortis;
there’s something inhuman about her. I tug at saw and finally it pulls free.

I’m covered in blood again.

I take a deep breath and experiment with a few swings with
the knife. Okay, fucker. Let’s do this.

I push open the door, tensing to fight the rock monster. And
he’s gone. I look around the empty chamber. I glance up and down the stairs. Nothing.
I lean out the giant hole in the wall and look around. There, twenty feet below
me, is my window with the gold coin sitting on the sill. Far below is the
ground, but I can’t seem to focus on it. There’s something about the coin that
hypnotizes me. It’s all I can do to look away.

I glance back at the dead woman’s door. There’s a plaque:
Iron Knight. Across the hall is a door. A similar plaque reads Shard. Appropriate
names.

I stare at Shard’s door. Why did he leave? Did he go back to
his room, or is he waiting to surprise me?

I have to know. I tiptoe to his door and crack it open.

The room is different from mine and Knight’s. The walls are
reinforced metal. Good thing, too, since he’s running from wall to wall,
shouting at them and pounding with both fists. I gently close the door.

So, what now? I could go back down to the entryway and jimmy
the door open, but… But something seems wrong about that. There’s more I need
to do. I need to get my memories back. I need to know what happened here. I
need…

What? There’s some duty I’m forgetting.

There’s one more floor above me. I climb the stairs as
quietly as I can, brandishing the screwdriver in front of me. When I get to the
top of the stairs, I’m stunned. The walls are floor to ceiling windows. Outside
is a panoramic view of the world. We’re surrounded by a forest. It’s lush and
green and sparkles with the remnants of last night’s storm. In the distance is
a city, bleached and ancient, but vibrant with life and power.

I yearn for that city. It feels like I’ve been away from it
for so long.

A sound shakes me back to the present. There are two doors
here, like the floor below, and a man is trying to force one of them open. He’s
running his hands over the doorframe, muttering to himself.

“Come out little swarm,” he hisses, his voice making my
stomach quake. “Come out so I can feed on you. It won’t hurt but for a moment.”

The screwdriver drops from my newly-trembling fingers. Crap.
I try to grab it before it hits the ground, but I’m too slow. It clatters on
the floor.

The man turns towards me and his hands… His fingers are
tentacles. His fingers are tentacles just like an octopus, with suckers. His fingers
are tentacles like the ones I saw in my nightmare. And just like in my
nightmare, one of the fingers is missing, torn off.

It wasn’t a nightmare after all.

“Hello, warden,” he hisses at me. I grab at the screwdriver
and hold it up. “Now, now. We shouldn’t wave pointy bits of metal at the other patients,
should we?” He glides across the floor towards me; are his feet tentacles, too?
“Someone could get hurt.”

He lashes forward, those tentacles unfurling towards my
face. I stab at them as hard as I can, jabbing the screwdriver into his arm.

He yanks back his arm and screams. It’s a horrifying sound
that goes on forever, but finally breaks into smaller screams. No, not screams.
Laughs.

He’s laughing at me.

“You’re going to have to get a better weapon than that if
you want to hurt me,” he says. “Now, run along. I’m busy here. I’ll go kill you
later.”

And like a terrified child, I run.

TO BE CONTINUED

If you can't wait for the rest of the story or the new version of the game, play it now (requires Flash).

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

The airlock seals shut behind me, and there’s a shudder in
the deck. The airlock venting. A moment later. A second later. And I would be
outside…

I don’t know how, but I remember what it’s like to die
exposed to vacuum. It’s not cold. Not at first. It’s just empty. And your blood
boils. It splits your capillaries open. Blood pours out your mouth, your nose,
your eyes.

I get my breathing under control. I get my heart under
control. I look down on the durasteel grating that makes up the floor and
wonder who I am. What I am. Where I am.

I glance around at the chamber. It’s a space ship,
obviously. There’s gravity, too, which is nice but confusing. My mind might be
a blank mush, but I know a little physics. Artificial gravity is impossible. It
just is.

Where am I?

I stagger to my feet, weak with more than relief. I feel
like I ran a marathon. Whatever happened when I came here took effort.

I bang my head on a metal sphere. What the hell?

There’s a giant metal ball hanging in the air in front of me.
It’s about two meters in diameter (when did I start using the metric system?),
rusted, and pockmarked with scars. Along the bottom are the words External
Operations Drone.

Why is an external drone inside?

It turns, revealing a set of tiny, black eyes. They tilt in
different directions. Examining me. Analyzing me. Finally, a panel on the side
opens. An arm extends from inside that pivots towards me. The end unfolds to a
point it tentatively holds out. Is it trying to… Shake my hand?

I hold out my hand.

It jabs past my arm into my chest. A searing pain as
electricity flows through me into the floor.

I’m on the ground again. Heart thudding again. Gasping
again.

And the world is strange again. The ship’s bulkheads are
holy tree bark. The floor is pure light. The drone is part machine, part rock,
part dragonscale.

The eyes analyze me as I try to regain my equilibrium. It
extends the arc welder again, but now it’s a stone fist holding a saw. I dive
away, crashing into a chamber aft and pulling the door shut behind me.

The room is dark, cold, empty. It’s a cave with a skeleton
sunken into pool. It’s a rotten tree branch. It’s a suspended animation room
built for long travels through space.

And it stays that way. My breathing slows and the only
sounds are the hissing and creaking of the ship around me. The ship sounds broken.
Damaged.

I stand and look around the room. It’s filled with empty
racks. At one time, dozens of suspended animation coffins must have filled this
place. Now, there’s only one. I walk over to it and look in the icy window. Inside
a frozen corpse holds a gun and stares at me with blank, brown eyes.

I manage to hold in a shriek.

My hands tremble, and I look down at them. I’m holding two things. The
keycard is still there, replacing the paperclip. And my journal is gone,
replaced by…Well, it’s some kind of
hologram projector. How do I know that?

I turn it on and a man appears in the air in front of me. He’s
dressed in the uniform of a Mongalisen in the Empire’s Fleet. His face is
unremarkable with the single exception of his skin. It’s a strange pink, just
like mine. He’s me.

“Ship’s log. Not the
last one. Not just yet.

“The damage is
extensive, and we’ve lost our repair EODs. Doesn’t look like we’ll make dock at
Formidicae Station. I’ve ejected all the functional crew pods, may Gok Tengri
protect them. As for me, well I’m going to hang on until she finally breaks
apart.

“Maybe I’ll take the
alien to the Eternal Blue Sky with me. Not a bad way to go...”

The hologram crackles and disappears. I turn it on again.
This time, I don’t see my phantom doppelganger, but a blueprint of the ship. It’s
marked everywhere with red damage notations. Some kind of greenish-blue glob is
blocking the main engine. A white circle, probably that drone pulses inside the
main airlock. A readout at the bottom says “No EODs in repair bay.”

The hologram crackles and goes out again. I turn it on
again, and it twists under my finger. Like the paperclip, it fluxes into a flat,
blue rectangle. Not a keycard, though. A book. It’s my journal. I changed it
back, somehow. I look at the keycard. No surprise, it’s a paperclip again.

I stand and look at the new room that grew around me. It’s a
bedroom with dark, red hangings and a four-poster bed.

On the floor, the body of a grey-haired woman lies face down
in a pool of blood. I yelp and jump backwards. My heart thuds. I gasp for
breath. But the world doesn’t change. I’m still in a bedroom with a bloody corpse.
I squeeze my eyes shut and beg it all to change. Back in the spaceship. Back in
my room. Anywhere. Anywhere but here.

But nothing happens. The bedroom is still a bedroom. The
dead old woman is still a dead old woman. The blood is still blood.

Reality is still reality, whatever that means now.

I’m possessed with an urge to see her face. I kneel by her
side and, careful not to touch the dark pool of blood, turn her body over. I
get blood on my hands anyway.Her face
is lined. Relaxed in death. I resist the desire to open her eyes to see if they’re
the same as the woman in the sleep coffin.

A dark-handled kitchen knife juts out of her stomach; her
hands are wrapped around it. It’s a weapon. I might need a weapon.

I reach out to take it, but pull back. I can’t do this. I
just can’t.

There’s a door out that looks remarkably like the one in my
bedroom. Am I back in the prison? I walk out into a hallway. Stairs go up and
down, and there in the middle of it all is a crude stone statue of a man.

The statue turns and faces me. The eyes crinkle with rage.

“Hi,” I say. “I was wondering if-”

Its mouth opens with a roar of sheer hatred. I should have
taken the knife. It charges, swinging sharp boulder-hands at my head. I try to
duck, but trip on my own feet and fall. Still, I’m out of the way of the blow,
which crashes into the wall.

With a horrid, creaking sound, the wall shatters. The wind from
outside blows through the giant hole, and I have just enough time to notice how
sweet it smells before I fall down the stairs. I crash onto the floor below and
barely hold in a scream of pain.

And the world is wrong again. It’s a tree. It’s a ship. It’s
a cave. Now I know what to do, though. Now I know if I wait and calm myself the
pain will go and the world will snap back into order. And now I also know what
causes it. It happens when I get hurt.

I stand and look around. I remember this place. I’m back in
the prison. This is the hallway outside the room I woke up in. My bedroom.

Beside the doorway is a small plaque. It reads “Flux WARDEN.”
The second word looks newer, scratched crudely in next to the name. Name? Is
Flux my name?

It’s a pretty stupid name if it is.

I push the door open and go in. Everything is the same as it
was when I left a little while ago. Same bed. Same bookshelf. Same bland,
pink-skinned face. I look out the barred window past the coin to the antenna on
the ground. Now that I see it again, it looks more like a lightning rod than an
antenna.

I remember a storm last night. Of course, I also remember a
man with tentacles, so who knows what’s going on in my head. But if both are true…
If both are real, then maybe a gust of wind knocked the rod off the roof. And
then maybe lightning struck the prison and knocked out the power. And if that’s
true…

If that’s true, maybe it’s all true. The stone monster. The
corpse. The spaceship.

Maybe I’m not crazy.

I sit on the bed and look at the journal. I flip through to
a random page.

They say I’ve come
far in my therapy, but have I? I look at the faces of my fellow prisoners, and
they scare me. How can I ever be healed if I’m like them? How could they ever
let me out knowing what I can do to the world? To people?

The horrible things
I’ve done to people. How can I ever pay for that?

I have to stop reading. I know it’s important, but it hurts
me inside. I start to take the paperclip on the page to mark it for later, but
stop.

I hold the paperclip out and stare at it. Concentrate on it.
I feel something within it. A potential. A key. It’s made by machine and
technology. Someone dug up metal, smelted it, stretched it into wire, and then
bent it into exact proportions.

I stretch it out into a line again. At the edge of hearing
comes the sound of a starship, damaged and bleeding air. I glance around the
room. Were the walls so smoothly perfect before? Was the window so small?

I twist it again. And again. And it’s not a paperclip
anymore. The keycard is back. The hologram is back. The starship is back.

I’m beginning to understand. I’m beginning to understand me
and what I can do.

TO BE CONTINUED

If you can't wait for the rest of the story or the new version of the game, play it now (requires Flash).

Monday, April 23, 2018

Back in the late 70s, I decided I wanted to learn to program games. I read books and worked on my home computer, but I couldn't wrap my mind around how it worked. Over the decades I tried eight programming languages and a dozen classes and books. The culmination of my efforts was a Flash text adventure called Flux Warden.

Nobody played it, which was a shame, but understandable. It was really, really hard. I wrote up a walkthrough, but still nobody played it. Recently I wondered, what if I made the walkthrough into a story? Would that entice people into playing?

Well, let's see. If enough people ask, I'll continue the story/walkthrough. If enough people ask, I'll port it from Flash into something else.

Part I

I think it’s a new nightmare, but how would I know? It felt
new. Tentacles wrapped around my face, sucking at my brain. I push and struggle
against the pain and kick out against… Something.

It squeals with rage and stumbles back. The the suckers rip
free, taking skin from my face, hair from my scalp. In the flashes of lightning
in the dark, I can just make it out. It’s a man. Kind of.

Then he’s gone. And I’m alone in the dark. I look out the
window. Rain. Thunder Lightning.

I don’t know anything. I wait, shivering, whimpering on the
bed. It’ll come back to me. Who I am. Where I am. It has to come back. Doesn’t
it? I just have to wait.

The storm clears. The sun rises. I still don’t remember.

I squint out the window, looking for a landmark to jog my
absent memory, but beyond the glass and bars are just nameless trees. On the
sill is a gold coin, dropped from who knows where. On the grass one story below
is some kind of antenna, blown off from the storm last night.

Bars. The window is barred. I stand and walk over to it. The
window is blocked on both sides with smooth, metal bars. The glass itself has
metal wires running through it. Unbreakable glass. Bars to keep prisoners in.

I’m a prisoner. I turn back to my room. My cell. It’s sparse:
a bookshelf with a single book. A mirror.

I take a look at myself.

Well, that didn’t help. I’ve got the standard “two eyes, two
ears, one nose, one mouth” configuration, but I don’t recognize my face. I’ve
got round circles of torn skin; so the nightmare was real. But here’s the weird
thing. Here’s the kicker. My skin is an even, almost plastic pink. There’s
something unnatural about it. Something unique and wrong.

But still no memories. Great.

I go to the bookshelf and take the slim, blue volume. It’s a
tattered old diary. When I open it, the pages crackle with age. I read the
first few sentences.

They want me to
write a diary. They want this book to tie me down. I will kill them all. I will
go into other worlds and twist them. I’ll go to Madness and break the Warden’s
mind. I will go to Love and break her heart. I will go to Hope and break her soul.

Whoever wrote it was unhinged. I hope it wasn’t me, but of
course it must be. There’s a paperclip on another page. Some kind of a
bookmark. I flip ahead and read.

They want me to “get
better” but what does that mean? They want me to stop breaking people. Breaking
the world. They’re so weak they had to lock me in here. Keep everything out of
my reach, fearing what I could do with the simplest of things.

But they missed the
paperclip. Idiots.

I take the paperclip off the page and hold it in my palm.
It’s a simple, silver coil of wire. There’s no magic, no power. It’s just a
mass-produced piece of junk.

But…

But there’s something about it. In it. I put the journal
under my armpit and rub my fingers against it’s coolness. It grows warm with my
touch.

I twist it into a line, leaving little crimps along the way.

I hear something. The tintinnabulation of electronics.
Whirs. Beeps.

I jump in shock. I look around. There’s no computers.
There’s no shining bulkheads or airlocks.

Were the lights always a fluorescent blue-white? I thought
they were yellowish incandescent.

I bend the paperclip back as best I can, hoping things will
go back to normal, but they get worse. The beeping in my head. Outside the window,
stars shine brightly through the blue morning.

The world ignores me, saying strange. A flux between madness
and sanity. I have to get out of here. I bang on the door of my cell. It opens.

I step out into the hallway. It’s round. Sparse. Utilitarian
stairs go up and down.

Bright lights shine down from the ceiling. Emergency lights.
Something is wrong. Did I do it? Whatever
caused it is fine with me. I’m free. I take the stairs down clutching the railing.
It’d just be my luck that I’d slip and fall now.

I’m on the ground floor now. It’s bare. Circular, like above.
No windows. The emergency lights are on here, too.

And there’s a door on the outside wall. A door out. It’s a
huge affair, all thick metal and exotic ceramics. I have a briefest puzzlement
about the tiny, mechanical keyhole sitting in the center. It’s an anachronism.
A paradox. I put my eye up to it and feel the cold air of outside before I can
focus away the blurred brightness.

Trees. Grass. A path away from this prison. I’m a few inches
away from freedom. If I only knew how to pick a lock.

I reach my fingers in, but I can’t make contact with any of
the gears. I try to push and pull, but there’s no handle. I kick it. I scream
random security phrases. Nothing.

There’s a panel at the bottom. I almost didn’t notice it, because
it’s perfectly flush and seamless with the rest of the door. I can see the two
screws holding it in. I kneel. Straight screws. I think I can fit my thumbnail
in…

Yes. My thumbnail fits perfectly. I turn, and it hurts, but
the screw turns with me. The lip of the screw comes out enough that I can get it
with my fingertips and I turn and turn and turn and finally the endless screw
comes free. I work on the other for a few minutes, and I’m holding two screws
in my hand. For a moment I stare at them and… And I feel something…

I feel something...

Wrong.

There’s something behind these screws. The one on the left screams
of a dark place far beneath a sea of molten carbon. The one on the right weeps,
whimpers of a place with no form but the islands of pain and torment.

With a small cry I throw them from me. Maybe it’s not a
prison. Maybe it’s an asylum.

I feel my face. The small welts from the tentacles are still
there. I’m not crazy. Not yet. But this place is cracking me into fragments.

Back to the door. The panel at the bottom has moved a little
and I can see the edges. It’s a small rectangle. I work at the edges and it pops
open, sliding up with a satisfying snap. Inside, two metal contacts glimmer in
the darkness.

I touch one and it sparks. It’s just a little jolt, barely
any pain, but my head swims. The world jumbles and breaks. I stare at the room,
lost in what it’s become. It’s a tower built for suicides, hanging a hundred
cubits of spikes. A mouth twice my height waiting impatiently to swallow me. A dock
on the edge of a gelatin ocean.

And then it’s gone, just a plain old exit foyer in an asylum
built like a prison.

I turn back to the doorway. One contact is charged. One
contact isn’t. They must connect when the key turns. I could try to force them
together, but I’m afraid I’ll go nuts again if I touch them.

I remember the book under my arm. The journal with the
paperclip in it.

I take the paperclip out and hold it out to the contacts. It’s
too short. I bend it straight.

Only it doesn’t bend. It stretches in a way that’s just
wrong. It thickens. It gains mass. I want to stop. I want to drop it, but it’s
too late. My fingers are working by themselves. They move in ways that make no
sense. They turn inside out, they split into hundreds of fingers and back
again, they change from black to white to plaid and back to pink.

And then they stop.And then I’m holding… I’m holding a small, plastic card.

I stare at it. It’s featureless. Red. And I know…

I know it’s a keycard. Back during the war with the Hexchak,
we created these. The Hexchak were masters of biological subterfuge. We never
understood how they could do it, but they could change you in subtle ways. You
wouldn’t even notice it, wouldn’t feel anything, but you’d suddenly be
different. You’d walk home from work, but when you tried your thumbprint at the
door, it wouldn’t open. When you offered your eye to the retina scanner, it
wouldn’t open. When the police came to help, they took your mouth swab and
couldn’t recognize your DNA.

So, keycards. Primitive. Silly. But they worked. And for
some reason, the Hexchak never figured out how to steal them just as we never
figured out how their technology worked.

How do I know any of this?

“Airlock cycle in progress. Ten second warning.”

I look around, startled by the voice. I’m not in the entry
hallway anymore. I’m in some kind of white tube. A round door sits on either
side of me. One has a window and I walk over to look out. It opens to the night
sky. Stars in all direction. Some kind of satellite hanging in the void. Wasn’t it daytime? And where’s the ground?

“Airlock cycle in progress. Five second warning.”

It’s not a doorway. It’s an airlock. I’m in space. I’m about
to be blown out into space.

And then I... Oh, you're falling asleep already. You just want to see the annual booth babes thing I do. Fine.

For the uninitiated, every year I go to the GDC and report on how many women are employed to work the booths in hopes of attracting male attention. Then I get them to take pictures with me, which pretty much ends their careers.

You can't see it in the picture, but they only gave her one pant leg.

These models have appeared less and less frequently every year. I keep thinking I'll find none, but then...

They only gave this woman half her clothes!

Well, there's always one or two.

Sometimes that doesn't work out so well for me.

I thought there weren't going to be any this year. Then I saw this booth (below) and thought "These look like they were just hired for the conference to draw men in, but maybe they work at the company. I should ask."

They now call me "triple threat" because I can make three women uncomfortable at the same time.

I walked over to this woman.

Me: So, what's a cryptocurrency.

Her: It's pretty simple. It's when you monetize the sixteenth sprocket of the antidiluvial commerce brackets you can create trammeled extruded marketing services.

Me: *nodding* Uh-huh. So, I was wondering if I could take a picture with-

Her: What's really interesting is how they used advanced microeconomic development modelling with tectonic apertures to fraternize greater profits!

Me: So... I guess you work for the company.

Her: No, they just hired me for the conference. I'm an econ major. I'm really into blockchain.

Me: So, I wondered if I could take this picture. If you could look disgusted...

And this woman broke in.

Her 2: Weren't you here last year?

Me: No. Not at all. I've never even been to San Francisco. What! Where am I? How did I get here?

Her 2: I remember you!

Me: There are a lot of people who look like me. Sleazy guys who are definitely not me.

Her: I was dressed as a fairy.

Me: Uhhhhh.

Her 2: With red hair.

Me: Ohhhh!

Her 2: You wanted me to look disgusted, but I didn't do a good job. You want to try again? I think I can be more disgusted with you.

Friday, April 6, 2018

Way back in the mists of time, I wrote this post about trying to stop wasting food. Wasting food has always bothered me, the reasons outlined in this novel:

"The greatest work of modern literature!" -John Oliver

And this video from Last Week Tonight:

"Not a bad show." -Matthew Kagle

Let's just say I don't like wasting food. However, I'm pretty bad at using all the leftovers, especially now that we have children.

Fun fact: the word "children" in the North Russian Zulu language roughly translates to "picky eaters."

The problem is that food in America is bought and sold in enormous quantities. You want a zuchini from Trader Joes, you have to buy a bag of six. What do you do with the other five? You can hide them in your kids' shoes, grind them into the cat food, or throw them into the compost bin where the raccoons will get it.

I wanted a different option. I wanted to eat those zuchini. Later, of course, I'd throw them up, but the effort was the important part.

Here is the journal of my struggle.

Day 0 - The Ingredients

This is what I have to eat if I don't want to throw anything out:

Jalapeno peppers (5)

Chicken sausage (5)

Sauerkraut (half jar)

Rice (1/3 cup)

Plums (2)

Lavash (1 package)

Egg white omelet with cheese and spinach (One box)

You may notice, I have a ton of jalapenos.

You may point out that jalapenos are one of the least spicy
peppers. You may point out that kids in some countries have lollipops laced
with spicier peppers. You may point out that if I can't eat one jalapeno, five
is going to be a problem.

You may kiss my ass. Although, I wouldn't because it's going to burn down there for a week.

Monday, March 26, 2018

Last week was the Game Developer's Conference: the biggest conference for professional game developers in the world. Game people come from all over, attend talks, look at the latest technology and (increasingly) get drunk. I've been going for twenty years.Twenty is one of those big, round numbers when you should reconsider the choices you've made in life. As I walked around the conference, I wondered why I was there. I couldn't say I'd been all that successful in my games career. Maybe it was time to call it quits.Still, just leaving quietly seemed anticlimactic.On Thursday, I walked by a group called Lost Levels. They give an open forum during GDC to anyone who wants to talk. I had an inspiration and signed up, hurriedly typing into Google Keep.I spoke in increasing fury and volume, so imagine that as you read. Here's what I said:

I'm here for a show of hands.

This is my 20th GDC.

I always wanted to make games, but there were no schools
when I was young. Developers were meager and few.

It just wasn't a career.

But in 1997, the industry had grown and I wanted to be a part
of it. ‎So I came to GDC. I came looking for a career that would feed me. That
would let me share something cool stuck in my head or help someone else share
something awesome.

Awesome was a real word back then.

I went to sessions. I met famous developers. I schmoozed at
parties in spite of my introversion and social obtuseness.

I didn't get a job.

I sent off resumes and cover letters. I used three
headhunters.

I didn't get a job.

I interviewed. They required I make up weapons or levels
or monsters to prove my skill. They stole my ideas and put them in their games,
but -- say it with me --

I didn't get a job.

I took classes in six programming languages. Turns out I
can't program.

I sketched and bought hundreds of dollars of art tools.
Turns out I can't draw.

I volunteered with the IGDA.

I wrote 35 design docs and countless levels.

I gathered friends, then coworkers, then strangers to
develop something on our own eight times to watch it fall apart over and over.

I spent tens of thousands on contractors who never
delivered.

I designed and printed business cards six times.

[I reached into my badge holder, where I kept my business cards and threw them all at the audience]

I published two novels and a bunch of interactive stories.

[I reached into the other side, where I kept the cards about my book and threw them]

I brought gifts.

[I reached into my backpack for the giveaways I bring every year and threw them]

I didn't get a job.

I spent two decades watching the industry grow up around me,
turning ideas I thought were my own into games I'd never make and then into
tropes nobody would ever touch again.

Should I come back? Should I be here for GDC #21? Will I
ever get a job?

And I looked up. I expected no hands. I expected to nod sadly, like a tragic hero at the end of his life. I was going to say "Well, that settles it" and walk off into the sunset.But there were hands up. Not all, but a slim majority.

Really?! I shouted, floored.

Okay. Well, I guess that settles it.

So I nodded, confused, like a tragic hero at the end of a free buffet and wandered off into the parking lot.